This is a fictional account of one woman's experience following the arrest of her son during the Yezhov purges. Drawing on the author's own experience, this novella paints an almost documentary-style picture of life in Leningrad during this period. The story of the publication of the book, written in 1939-40 but not published in the Soviet Union until 1988, is treated in the introduction, which also contains a brief biography of the author, a vocabulary and notes.